Edtor's Liesense

[howard male]

There seems to be a thing amongst editor types, to type almost incomprehensibly - perhaps to demonstrate to us mere foot-soldiers that they are even too busy to make sure their fingers land on the right keys in the right order, even when conveying the shortest and simplest of messages.

I can happily tolerate a lack of punctuation, no capital letters, or spelling mistakes (I'm the worst speller in the world), but take a look at these examples, cut and pasted from recent emails I've been sent - I've had many more. Names have been removed to protect the rushed:

tuesday plase

it shuld be in monday

at this stage i cant guarentee you a weekly review anyway becase of
space

yues review it pse
650 words the next mornign by 10.15

Is this a trend towards the email equivalent of the scrawled Doctor's prescription - unique to the media - or does everyone suffer these garbled messages in their work places? This is not a rhetorical question!

[Phil Meadley]

I hear you Howard. I like the one word responses best, when you've just spent time trying to explain succinctly why something is a really worthwhile covering, or why you are unable to cover a certain event etc.

I wish I was in a position where I could tartly reply (with a garbled message) to people without fear of reprisal. I'd love to be able to use the 'overworked' tag as an excuse for blatant rudeness.

[Con Murphy]

Our very very senior manager (not sure what his official title is these days - CIO, CEO, C3P0, who knows?) has taken to emailing people in txtspk (that's text-speak for the literate among you). Now, some people would argue that young people today are effectively learning a new language with this pioneering brand of time-and-space-saving mobile phone and instant message communication, and I see some merit in that viewpoint. But in the more considered environment of online memo and/or letter writing that is email communication, it just comes across as at best posturing and at worst downright rude.

[howard male]

Phil wrote -

I like the one word responses best, when you've just spent time trying to explain succinctly why something is a really worthwhile covering, or why you are unable to cover a certain event etc.

This could turn into the equivalent of Monty Python's hardworking old Yorkshiremens Sketch:

"Blimey, you get a reply! Most of the time I don't even get that. And then two or three garbled words turn up, five minutes before band's due on stage, asking for 5000 words by t' time band's finished playing!"

[Phil Meadley]

I once had an editor rather snidley bring me up for getting the surname of someone wrong, but actually spell a word wrong in his reply. I rather cheekily quoted him and mentioned that it was easily done, which I don't think he liked very much.

Phil

PS I can't count the number of times my e-mails have been ignored, even when I needed some information urgently from them (the elusive spell-check shy).